Please provide a comment on discussion below. Use peer-reviewed resources and follow APA guideline.

Many hospitals and governments have been using financial indicators to assess their fiscal and operational health. The article I will be discussing dives into the specific details of how these organizations use the financial indicators. The reason for this article is to expose public health agencies and how these financial indicators are not generally employed. It discusses how these measures can be applied to improve their organization.

The focus of the literature was a pair of activities associated with the use of financial indicators. The first one was that the organizations were able monitor their performance by comparing their performance to similar organizations. Second, several organizations assessed their financial well-being to identify strengths and weaknesses and to promote performance enhancements and profits. One of the articles in the literature review demonstrated how an organization was able to expand service and improve customer satisfaction by using financial indicators to improve performance. The first thing they did was obtaining information from ration data which increased organizational knowledge. Next the organization went to work on improving its financial performance. And Finally, the success in the first two areas were possible thanks to the continuous quality improvement initiatives adopted by the organization.

The article stresses the importance for public health agencies to employ financial ration analysis to monitor performance. They would create more of a community impact and since it is the mission of public health to ensure a healthy community, it would potentially improve the health of populations across the United States. To do this, the article recommends that funders and leaders in public health should promote the development of data in uniform formats to health ratio analysis. And to increase the number of agencies collecting financial data to allow comparisons among similar agencies. This would help identify areas that need improvement using benchmarks.

Suarez, V., Lesneski, C., & Denison, D. (2011). Making the case for using financial indicators in local public health agencies. American journal of public health, 101(3), 419-425.